Opinion
Kizz Daniel, stars’ buga and the curse of stardom
Asked to write an essay in professor of psychology, Scott Allison’s “Heroes & Villains” class at the University of Richmond, Virginia, Corinne Devaney chose Bob Marley. Marley was a mulatto born in a crime-centric slum neighbourhood of St. Anne in Jamaica. He was a product of a liaison between a black mother, then 18-year-old Miss Cedella Malcolm, and Norval Sinclair Marley, a white father from Crowborough, East Sussex, UK. The older Marley was then about 60 years of age. Sinclair and Cedella had met and later married while she was working as a supervisor on a Jamaican plantation. Norval later abandoned both Cedella and her son after his less-than-illustrious second world war military expedition to Jamaica and died in 1955 while Bob was 10 years old.
In spite of the horror of his upbringing, Marley made a heroic transformation from the slum to the pinnacle of stardom, becoming one of the global best-selling artists of all time. His signature was a queer assortment of unkempt dreadlocks. This was sauced by an anti-imperialist, pan-Africanist, asceticism-prescribing Rastafari religion that venerates despotic Ras Tafari Makonnen, otherwise known as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia as “King of Kings, Lord of Lords and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah”. This was woven around an obsessive fascination with smoking marijuana as a religious sacramental object of worship. Marley died in May of 1981 while battling melanoma cancer.
While the Rastafari religion, whose major precepts are taken from the Ethiopian Orthodox Church’s liturgy, tempered Jamaican musical stars from manifesting weird traits associated with musical stars all over the world, it is not the same elsewhere. Rising from rejection in an audition by the London Decca Records company on January 1, 1962, after performing 15 songs in about an hour, Decca’s assessment report was that the guitar group, The Beatles, was not up to standard. Indeed, Decca said they couldn’t see a future in the group. However, a few years after, The Beatles became world-famous, ruling the world. It sold 1.6 billion singles in the United States, 177 million albums, and 600 million albums in the world, with 21 number one “Billboard Hot 100” which was recorded to be “the most any band has ever”.
Apparently basking in the euphoria of this stardom, John Lennon, a member of the band, during an interview with an Evening Standard reporter, Maureen Cleave, in March 1966 had remarked: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink … We’re more popular than Jesus now – I don’t know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity”. Not long after, the rock and roll group, made up of himself, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr got separated and Lennon himself got shot on the evening of December 8, 1980. He was fatally wounded in the attack which occurred at his New York residence by Mark David Chapman who claimed to have been incensed by his lavish lifestyle and the unconscionable 1966 comment about Christ attributed to him.
The recent spat between celebrated hip-hop Nigerian musician and Buga hit song-maker, Oluwatobiloba Daniel Anidugbe widely known by his stage name, Kizz Daniel, and organisers of the Summer Amplified Show in Tanzania last Sunday has opened the byzantine world of musical stars for examination. Daniel’s absence had courted the ire of the Tanzanian fans who thronged the venue to see his widely admired eclectic performance. Irked by this act, the show promoter, Steven Uwa, had to report his absence to the police. Uwa, who claimed to have expended about$300,000, with a booking of the musician for $60,000, said that the “flimsy” excuse offered by Kizz Daniel was that his baggage containing his gold chain was not brought on time by the airline he flew with.
Stardom as a feature of popular culture has been explored severally by scholars. One of the issues that engage research works on it is whether stardom is innate or artificial, what leads to it and its impact on society. Issues of explanation are sought around the way stardom valorizes the identity of its holders and shoots them to celebrity status, while opening and closing doors for them. Is stardom natural or predestined? This has provoked an examination of that famous statement, “a star is born” with questions arising as to the probability of attainment of star status without the input of the individual.
In December 2020, with the piece I entitled ‘Ayinde Barrister: In memoriam of a musician who peaked by Ayinla Omowura’s graveside’, I naturally ruptured the ice of that divide between predestination and the natural progression of stardom. With it, I provoked the bile of fans of famous Yoruba Fuji music star, Sikiru Ayinde Barrister. Barrister was a known protégé of late Apala music star, Ayinla Omowura, who was killed in 1980 in a barroom squabble. At Ayinla’s departure, Barrister generously filched songs sang by Ayinla at live performances without acknowledgement of their ownership. So when I stated in the said piece that if the Omowura had not pre-deceased, the Ibadan-born Fuji musician, Barrister would not have garnered the kind of cult-like stardom he got at death, hell was let loose. The African Studies Association (ASA) has asked me to come and articulate the claim I adumbrated at its November conference in Philadelphia in a paper I entitled ‘Between Ayinla Omowura and Ayinde Barrister: Conflicting notions of stardom in Apala and Fuji’.
In this piece, however, what engages me is why and how stardom has become a very huge graveyard replete with skeletons of once burnished stars whose prematurely killed stardom resulted from their vacuous Buga and indiscretion. This is aside from their inability to manage the glowing fire of their successes. In life and death, Marley transcended that profiling. Upon his rise to becoming one of a coterie of music artists who hailed from the Third World and who achieved international stardom, Marley’s star never dimmed, even 41 years after his demise. This probably was why in his ‘Zion Train’ track, Marley warned superstars not to be lost in the cryptic maze of stardom. “Don’t gain the world and lose your soul, wisdom is better than silver and gold,” he advised.
Many superstars never heeded this advice and fell into the precipice associated with stardom. Surrounded by the quadrupedal infamies of alcohol, women, cash and glitz, many stars allowed themselves to be driven by the whims of these infamies and down to their ruins. In my piece entitled ‘Our water bottle children are here’, (October 18, 2017) a commentary on the thunderbolt that hit the Nigerian music world as a result of the deaths of musical associates of hip hop musical superstar, David Adeleke, aka Davido, I used the song of another street boy hip-hop star musician, Temitope Adekunle, aka Small Doctor, entitled ‘Penalty’, to illustrate the pestilence of drugs – which I called the water bottle culture – and how drugs crash the stardom of stars.
That week, the water bottle culture was implicated in the deaths of Olugbenga Abiodun, son of the current governor of Ogun state, “Prince Dr Dapo”, aka DJ Olu and Chime Amaechi who were both found dead inside a BMW car in a garage in Banana Island, Lagos. Three days earlier, another Davido’s friend, Umeike Tagbo, had reportedly died on his birthday at a drinking bar located in the Lekki area after an alleged consumption of 10 shots of tequila drug. DJ Olu and Chime’s remains were said to be oozing out blood from their nostrils and mouths. The Lagos police command said preliminary physical examination suggested deaths from a drug overdose. Substances suspected to be drugs were also recovered by the police from the victims.
In faraway South Africa, a star I adored for her nightingale voice, Brenda Fassie, also ended in an unmitigated tragedy due to drug overuse. Fassie, whose Xhosa name was Nokuzola, a feminine name which when translated means “quiet, calm or peace,” was a highly talented South African young lady, so gifted that the great Nelson Mandela was fascinated by her song and danced with her on the dancehall. Born November 3, 1964, in Langa, Cape Town, Brenda was a wonder to watch. Her album, Memeza (Shout), which was released in 1997, is rated as the apogee of her musical success. It went platinum on the first day of its release. After Yvonne Chaka Chaka, arguably no musician from that country possessed Fassie’s waltz and voice. She also made a huge contribution to Miriam Makeba’s Sangoma, as well as Harry Belafonte’s anti-apartheid song, Paradise in Gazankulu. She was once voted 17th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.
Brenda was not only highly talented but possessed the tantrums of divas, so much that Time magazine dubbed her the Madonna of the Townships and fans affectionately called her MaBrrr or The Black Madonna, due basically to her bold stage antics and outrageous dance steps. My favourite of her songs was ‘Wedding Day’. As a rights advocate, she was outspoken and held very strong views against the system, making frequent visits to the poor townships of Johannesburg. Her songs also mirrored her persuasions as she sang about life in townships, thus harvesting her tremendous popularity among the poor people. In 1989, Brenda released the song entitled ‘Black President’, a tribute to Nelson Mandela and deplored her music to oppose the regime of apartheid.
The world, however, began to notice hiccups in Brenda’s life when her weird passion spilt into the limelight. Brenda was found to be a suicidal drug addict and addictively wedged to lesbianism. In 1995, she was found in a hotel room with the remains of her lesbian partner who passed on during their lesbian orgy, gingered with drug consumption. She had died of an apparent heroin overdose but Brenda survived. She must have gone in and out of rehab about 30 times and on one occasion, sure she had overcome drugs, screamed: “I’m going to become the pope next year. Nothing is impossible!” A few years after, Brenda reportedly collapsed in her brother’s arms, flung her last cocaine straw on the kitchen floor of her home in Buccleuch, fell into a coma and died after suffering from brain damage. Before she passed on, on May 9, 2004, Mandela visited her at the hospital. A few days later, a post-mortem examination reported that she was even HIV-positive at death. The fall of that highly beloved and celebrated Nigerian musical star, Majek Fashek was similar to Brenda’s.
Michael Jackson was another superstar who failed to understand the ephemerality of the glitz of stardom. An American singer, songwriter and dancer who was labelled the King of Pop, Jackson was regarded as one of the most significant cultural icons of the 20th century. By the 1980s, he had begun to catch the bug of the ills of stardom due to the catacomb of controversies and speculations that surrounded him. He changed his appearance from his delectable black look and sunk into a controversial lifestyle that caught attention for its awkwardness. Then, he lapsed into child abuse. In 1993, allegations of sexually abusing a family friend’s child were appended on him but banking on the lack of evidence against him, he had to circumvent the lawsuit by settling out of court. The same accusation was pelted at him in 2005. He was however acquitted by the court due to a lack of evidence. He later died on June 25, 2009, from an overdose of propofol administered to him by Conrad Murray, his personal physician. In 2011, Murray was eventually convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
Saibu Ayinde Bakare Ajikobi, popularly known as Ayinde Bakare, was another pioneering Yoruba highlife musician who stardom snuffed off the light of his candlestick. Born in 1912 at Okesuna Lafiaji area of Lagos, to a father who retired as a soldier and who hailed from the Ajikobi compound in Ilorin, Kwara state, Bakare luxuriated as a juju musician beginning from 1935 after his apprenticeship to the then famous Tunde King and Alabi Labilu. He was rumoured to have been the first juju musician to make use of an amplified guitar in 1949. Bakare was the king of bandstands and was extremely popular in the social circle of Yorubaland, especially in Lagos and Ibadan in the 1950s and 1960s. His sobriquet was ‘Mr Juju’. In 1957, Bakare toured the United Kingdom and in 1968, released an album recorded in Britain entitled ‘Live the Highlife’.
However, as the words in the tribute done for him posthumously by Ayinla Omowura say; “when one is as lowly as to be able to afford to eat only an ordinary vegetable for dinner, they have to be as watchful and mindful of danger as the man who is rich – b’eyan nje’fo sun ko sora, belentase eni l’owo l’owo“. Those who sought to extinguish Bakare’s shining star found out his Achilles heel – voracious consumption of the flesh of a species Wole Soyinka referred to as ‘Daughters of Discord’. In 1972, Bakare had gone to perform at a party in Lagos. When the band took a mid-performance break, a sultry damsel he had been ogling during play literally summoned him backstage. That was the last anyone saw of him. Police found a floating body three days later on the Lagos Lagoon which it buried as an unclaimed body. When tracing by the family led to his burial ground, he was exhumed and a coroner’s inquest concluded he died by drowning. Two members of his band who had earlier complained of being underpaid were suspected but police had to set them free them due to the absence of irrebuttable evidence of their involvement in his murder.
Naira Marley, Hakeem Okikiola (the Zah Zuh Zeh crooner), Burna Boy and many of Nigeria’s musical stars have been accused at one point or the other of going the Brenda route or living a violence-propelled life. This must have been due to their huge overestimation of their star status. Recently Burna Boy was accused of getting enveloped in a violent scandal in a club while the earlier two embraced Brenda with abandon. Omowura got killed in a squabble over an okada.
There are so many music stars who though did not die as a result of their inability to study the nuances of stardom, got dragged down and into infamy by naivety. The Achilles heel of some of them is their inability to appropriately appropriate the gains of stardom leading to regrets when stardom which will wane at some point eventually does.
Some musical stars complain of being unfavourably and excessively singled out by society for demonization. Must you be a musician to fall into disrepute? They ask. The attention on them and the over-concentration of what I earlier called quadrupedal infamies of alcohol, women, cash and glitz force them to have their lives driven by the whims of these infamies. This leads to the plastic and unreal lives they live. While Daniel Anidugbe aka, Kizz Daniel, has effectively acquitted himself of blame in the Tanzanian show fiasco, he and all stars – whether musical, showbiz, the wealthy, famous, etc – should take a lesson from the aphorism of the Yoruba which says; “the man who carries a bucket full of palm oil should be wary of the stony ground – epo ni mo ru, oni yangi, ma ba temi je“. Most of the superstars take cognizance of the wealth and fame surrounding them but are oblivious of the huge responsibility to tread the ground softly placed on their shoulders.
Dr. Festus Adedayo, a columnist, journalist and lawyer writes from Ibadan, Oyo State
On Monday and Tuesday last week, workers and political operatives within the precincts of the new Senate building in the National Assembly complex, Abuja, were treated to a replica of the Theatre of the Absurd. This type of drama originated in Europe and later spread to America in the 1950s. It was influenced by existential philosophy and Albert Camus’s essay The Myth of Sisyphus.
In that work, Camus captured the fundamental human needs and compared the absurdity of man’s life with the situation a figure of Greek mythology, Sisyphus found himself, where he was condemned to repeat forever the task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, and repeatedly sees the same roll down the hill as he approaches the top.
He, thereafter, juxtaposed life’s absurdities with what he called the “unreasonable silence” of the universe to human needs and concluded that rather than adopt suicide, in frustration, “revolt” was required.
82-year-old Dr. Muhammed Adamu Fika, former Clerk to the National Assembly and former Chairman, of the National Assembly Service Commission (NASC), who calls himself the “smaller Adamu Fika,” must have come across the Camus essay in deciding to lead an emergency meeting of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries of the National Assembly on November 18. The emergency meeting, which was jointly held with members of the Association of Retired Staff of the National Assembly was meant to salvage the pathetic plights of the National Assembly retirees.
Eighty-two-year-old Fika can hardly gather the pace to navigate round the corners of the National Assembly, but he insisted on making the trip to enable him to preside over the meeting as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries. As his retiree colleagues, many of whom are far younger, saw him struggling to walk the required distance from the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Library, originally fixed as venue to the new Senate building, they had to provide some shoulders to lean on. At one stage, an office chair was converted to a wheelchair to ensure the elderly Fika got to certain locations. It was a sad tale, especially if you look at the essence of Fika’s trip to the National Assembly. He was there to preside over a meeting to press home the need for the payment of the entitlements of National Assembly retirees. An alarm had earlier been sounded on the different Whatsapp platforms of the retired workers of the National Assembly to the effect their members were dying in numbers. It was revealed that no fewer than 20 retired workers had died awaiting the payment of their entitlements in the recent past. Another set of retirees numbering 12 were said to have been bedridden in different hospitals across the land. That alarm was more than enough to prompt Fika and his retiree colleagues to an emergency meeting. But the sight of an elderly man, fighting a just cause on an improvised wheelchair was more than absurd.
Payment of the entitlements got stalled after former President Muhammadu Buhari assented to the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which mandated the National Pensions Commission (PENCOM) to hand over assets of the staff of the National Assembly in its custody after the passage of the National Assembly pension law.
In the beginning, there were no signs that things would go south on the implementation of the Act. Three months after the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act came into effect, PENCOM had written the management to convey its decision to hand off the pension assets of the staff of the National Assembly, while requesting the National Assembly management to provide it with account details to remit the accrued funds. The 10th Senate and the House of Representatives also provided hope for the retirees by providing a take-off grant to the tune of N2.5 billion in the 2024 budget. However, the NASS management could not comply with the request from PENCOM because the Pensions Board had not been inaugurated. Months after months, the retirees waited. Those who were already enjoying their benefits when PENCOM was administering had the payments terminated, while the waiting game ensued.
In trying to fast-track the implementation of the Act, Fika, as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Council of Retired Clerks and Secretaries had forwarded a letter to the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, intimating them of the council’s recommendations for positions in the National Assembly Service Pensions Board.
Fika said in the letter, dated February 27, 2024, that “Considering the pathetic health conditions of our retired colleagues, Your Excellency will agree with me that the establishment of the National Assembly Pensions Board is overdue five (5) months after Mr. President’s assent.” He said that his letter was premised on the provisions of Sections 2 and 17(3) of the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023, which indicate that the presiding officers of the National Assembly shall make the appointments subject to recommendations of the Council of Clerks and Secretaries. But some persons are insinuating that the undue delay might have been instigated by two strange bedfellows-politics and money. Where the two are involved, simply things hardly follow a straight course. However, nothing justifies the nearly 20-month delay in inaugurating the Pensions Board.
At the end of the emergency meeting on Monday, further meetings were said to have been scheduled at the instance of the Senate President, Akpabio, his deputy, Jibril Barau and others but there were no conclusive steps, yet.
A communique released after the meeting indicated that the retirees observed that the National Assembly Service Pensions Board Act, 2023 went through full legislative process in the 9th National Assembly and was assented to by President Muhammad Buhari. It further noted that the delay in implementing the Act has caused undue and untold hardship to the retirees who are unable to access their retirement benefits, adding that while a number of the retired Staff have died, many others are bedridden due to sufferings occasioned by the non-payment of their entitlements.
According to the communique, the meeting decried the pains the retired staff have been subjected to and recalled that appropriate recommendations as per the composition of the Pensions Board have been made to the Presiding Officers of the National Assembly, in line with the enabling Act.
Like every lover of Yoruba traditional music, language and culture, I have of recent been inundated with requests to lend a voice to the newest raging fire in the Fuji music genre. Since the passage of Alhaji Sikiru Ayinde Balogun, popularly known as Ayinde Barrister or Agbajelola Barusati, there have been longstanding tiffs on whom of the trio of Ayinde Omogbolahan Anifowose, KWAM 1; self-named King Saheed Osupa (K.S.O.) and Wasiu Alabi Pasuma, was the “King.”
These musicians’ recent quest for supremacy is not new. From time immemorial, supremacy battles have been part and parcel of Yoruba music. Apparently now tempered by modernity, in the olden days, the battles were fought with traditional spells, incantations and talisman aimed at deconstructing and liquidating their rivals. Mostly fought on genre basis, I submit that pre and post-independence entertainment scene would have been livelier, far more robust than it was but for the acrimonious liquidating fights of those eras.
In the Sakara music, Abibu Oluwa, a revered early precursor of this Yoruba musical genre, who reigned in the late 1920s and 1930s, had Salami Alabi Balogun, popularly known as Lefty Salami, Baba Mukaila and Yusuff Olatunji as members of his band. Oluwa praise-sang many Lagos elites of his time, especially Herbert Macaulay to whom he sang his praise in the famous track named “Macaulay Macaulay.” In it, he sang the foremost Nigerian nationalist’s alias of Ejonigboro – Snake on the Street and prayed that he would not come to shame.
Sakara also produced the likes of S. Aka Baba Wahidi, Kelani Yesufu (alias Kelly). It was sung with traditional Yoruba instruments like the solemn-sounding goje violin whose history is traced to the north, and the roundish Sakara drum, beaten with stick and whose appearance is like that of a tambourine. Sakara music is often called the Yoruba variant of western blues music because of its brooding rhythm though laced with a high dosage of philosophy.
When Oluwa died in 1964, he literally handed over to Lefty who, born on October 1913, died December 29, 1981. Lefty, a talking drummer under Oluwa, churned out over 35 records before his demise, one of which was a tribute to Lagos monarch, Oba Adele (Adele l’awa nfe – Oba Adele is the king we want) and another to the Elegushi family. I dwelt considerably on Sakara because it is believed to have had considerable influence on other genres of traditional African Yoruba music, especially Apala and Fuji, with the former sometimes indistinguishable from Sakara.
Apala music, whose exponent is said to be Haruna Ishola, originated in the late 1930s Nigeria. Delivered with musical instruments like a rattle (Sekere) thumb piano, (agidigbo) drums called Iya Ilu and Omele, a bell (agogo) and two or three talking drums, Apala and Sakara are the most complex of these genres of traditional Yoruba music, due to their infusion of philosophy, incantations and dense Yoruba language into their mix. Distinct, older and more difficult in mastery than Fuji music which is considered to be comparatively easy to sing, Ayinla Omowura, Ligali Mukaiba, Kasumu Adio, and many others were Apala leading lights of the time. The three genres have very dense Islamic background.
The latest entrant of all the three genres is Fuji. Pioneered by Ayinde Barrister no doubt, for an Apala musician biographer like me, I am confused that Omowura, as far back as early 1970s, asked listeners in need of good Fuji music to come learn from him – “Fuji t’o dara, e wa ko l’owo egbe wa…” Sorry, I digressed.
While KWAM 1 emerged with his Talazo music from the ashes of his being a music instrument arranger for Barrister’s musical organization in the early 1980s, the feud in the house after Barrister’s death erupted when narratives allegedly oozed unto the musical scene that KWAM 1 referred to himself as the creator of Fuji music. He however promptly denied the claim. For decades, Osupa and Pasuma were locked in horns over supremacy of the Fuji music genre. In August 2023, the two however seemed to have decided to thaw their feud as they shared stage with Wasiu Ayinde, at Ahmad Alawiye Folawiyo, an Islamic singer’s 50th birthday celebration in Lagos. KWAM 1 glibly acted as their senior colleague at the event.
As an indication that they are no bastards of the teething and recurrent supremacy battles that emblemize traditional Yoruba music, the three Fuji music icons seem to have gone into the trenches again. It first started with Taiye Currency, an Ibadan-based alter-ego of Pasuma picking a fight with the musician who self-styled himself Son of Anobi Muhammed’s Wife. In a viral video, Currency had disclaimed reference to Pasuma as his “father” in the music industry. In another video not long after, KWAM 1, like some kind of father figure, was shown asking Currency to apologize to Pasuma.
A few days ago, a video of Osupa went viral. Therein, he was chastising a particular hypocrite he called “Onirikimo” and “alabosi”, who is “stingy and is ready to shamelessly collect money from those under him.” Osupa also claimed that this “shameless elder” had strung a ring of corn round his waist and should be ready to be made fun of by hens. Watchers of the endless tiffs among these Fuji icons swear that KWAM 1 was the unnamed Fuji musician Osupa was casting aspersion on.
The trio of Sakara, Apala and Fuji music also witnessed such petty squabbles. While many claim that the fights were promotional gambits aimed at having their fans salivate for their hate-laced musical attacks against one another, some others claim that the rivalries were genuine. In the Apala music scene, Haruna Ishola and Kasumu Adio fought each other to the nadir, with Adio, who sang almost in the same voice and cadence as Ishola, suddenly vamoosing from the musical scene. Rumours and speculations had it then that a mysterious goat bit Adio and rendered him useless. While Ayinla Omowura also fought Fatai Olowonyo, Fatai Ayilara, among others in the Apala genre, the duo of Yusuff Olatunji and S. Aka also feuded till their last days. This is not to mention the interminable fight between Kollington Ayinla and Barrister.
If the tiff between the trio of KWAM 1, Osupa and Pasuma is about age and Yoruba traditional respect for elders, KWAM 1 would easily go away with the trophy of the best of the three. However, if philosophical depth, musical elan, research of lyrics and deployment of Yoruba language are at issue, none of the other two musicians can unbuckle Osupa’s sandals. Osupa began his musical career in 1983 as a teenager and has gone through the mills, his late father being a musician, too and Awurebe music lord, Dauda Epo Akara’s musical contemporary.
Unlike their predecessors, the three Fuji musicians are literate and should thus address their musical issues in more mature manner. Osupa even recently bagged a degree from the department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. One thing they should know is that, whether one is supreme to the other or not, their fans will readily queue behind the brand that delights them.
Two incidents happened during the 1994/95 NYSC service year, which I was part of in Birnin-Kebbi, Kebbi State, and they gave me profound culture shocks that I still remember till today. I would equally say that those incidents probably justified the Federal Government’s decision to float the scheme.
We were told that part of the reasons General Yakubu Gowon floated the NYSC was to ensure national integration, cohesion and exposure of young Nigerians to cultures of other parts of the country other than where they were born.
First was the shock of seeing a director that I was attached to in the then Government House, who had just taken a new wife, and sat among drivers, gate men and other junior staff to dine. I saw them seated round a huge iron pot of Koko, a local delicacy, exchanging one big spoon made of calabash, as each took turns to use the spoon to eat the delicacy. It was as if I was witnessing a scene where children of a big family were struggling to catch a portion of food or where people were eating Saara, as they say it in Yorubaland.
As I walked past the noisy crowd, I was transfixed seeing the newly-wedded director among the lot. He saw me standing still, as I couldn’t comprehend what he was doing there, and he got the message. ‘Taiyo, (as he used to call me) you won’t understand,’ he said as he waved to me to keep going. When we later saw, he explained that what he just did was a way of assuring the commoners that ‘we are all one,’ as they felicitated him on the new bride. But I could not fathom how the occupant of a ‘huge office’ as that of a director in a Government House , would sit among “commoners” on a tattered mat to share a single spoon and eat in public.
The other incident was quite pathetic. My friend, Tunde Omobuwa, was posted to a school in Yauri, in the southern part of the state, for his primary assignment. But he found the place boring on weekends. So, he arranged to always be with me on weekends.
One such weekend, we decided to take a stroll round the streets near the Government House. We took off from the place of my primary assignment, the Federal Information Centre; bought corn beside the office, and started ‘blowing’ the ‘mouth organ’ as we strolled. We were too engrossed in our gist and the sweetness of the corn to note that some young boys were trailing us, praying that some leftovers of the corn would drop for them to scavenge. Somehow, the two of us dropped the corn cob almost simultaneously. We were more than taken aback by a commotion that erupted at our back. Four eight or nine year-olds had descended on the supposed leftovers and broken the corn cobs into pieces. I was again transfixed as if one was hit by an electric shock. Remember that feeling when you play with electric fish?
I was moved to tears as I had never ever seen a group of children scavenging on nothing as it were. I beckoned to the kids and offered them N20, which was the highest denomination at the time, and with some smattering Hausa words told them to go buy their own corn from the same place we got ours. As they left, heading to the corn seller, I couldn’t erase that ugly sight from my mind. Was it really possible that some people scavenge on nothing this way? I was later to see incidents of children swarming around restaurants and pouncing on near empty plates.
These incidents told me clearly that the North was a different place and that the life of the boy child is not only risky and endangered but sold to stagnation and deprivation, unless you are one of the lucky few.
Having benefited from the free education policy of the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) between 1979 and 1983, when the Second Republic was terminated, I knew that there is a lot the government can do in educating the children. In my secondary school days, I was the Library Prefect at one point, and so I saw an excess of books supplied by the government to our school. So, I was an example of the feasibility of free education. It was the same way the Action Group government had handled education in the years preceding Nigeria’s independence and the First Republic.
So why can’t the state governments in the North declare free and compulsory education for the young ones out there? Why should children be made to scavenge on empty corn cobs just to see if they can find pieces of seeds left over?
And why was my director giving drivers and gate men in the Government House false hope that they were all the same, instead of him to challenge them to seek to lift themselves up the social ladder?
I think there was no excuse for the North not to have adopted a free education policy, just as Chief Obafemi Awolowo did in the South-West. And if we say the North needs to look itself in the mirror, you again remember the efforts by President Goodluck Jonathan to educate the multitude of Northern children through the Almajiri Schools. That government built more than 400 of such schools, which were abandoned because it could upset the oligarchy. The oligarchs forgot the truism that the children of the poor they refuse to train today won’t let their children sleep peacefully.
But the governor of Borno State, Prof Babagana Zulum, appears to have got the message. Last week, I was thrilled to see him organise a summit to reform the Almajiri system.
The Almajiri education system is a traditional Islamic method of learning widely obtained across states in northern Nigeria. Through that system, which is tied to Islamic teaching, youths, especially boys are kept out of the formal western education system. I don’t know why the teachings by Islamic scholars cannot go alongside that of Western education as it obtains in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other Islamic countries that are doing well economically and in the world of science, technology.
While addressing the summit, Zulum had mentioned the need to address the root causes of insecurity through the provision of education for citizens of Borno, adding that improper teaching of Islamic studies has contributed to the emergence of Boko Haram insurgents in the state.
According to him, to curtail whatever is the adverse effect of Almajiri education; the Borno State Government has established the Arabic and Sangaya Education Board to introduce a unified curriculum for Sangaya and Islamic schools. He said that the reform would include establishing Higher Islamic Colleges to cater for Almajiri children and blending the religious teachings with the secular curricula as well as skills.
He said: “The Sangaya Reform is a great development. It will give Almajiri a better chance in life, particularly the introduction of integrating western education, vocational, numeracy, and literacy skills into the centres, which are also described as Almajiri and Islamic schools.
“Distinguished guests and esteemed educationists, government’s intention was to streamline the informal and formal education systems to quality integrated Sangaya School for admission into colleges and universities.”
One would have thought that governors with radical postures like Nasir el-Rufai and others before him would have proposed this type of reform, but it is better late than never. Zulum should be supported to get something out of this.
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